Why Do I Feel Bad for Shia LaBeouf?

After displaying his most bizarre behavior yet, Shia LaBeouf finds himself at the center of another feverish media firestorm. And, honestly, I feel bad for the guy. But are my protective instincts predicated on sympathy?

And with every jab, good-natured or not, I felt a pang of protectiveness. "Leave Shia alone!" I wanted to shout into the ether, Garden State style. For the record, I have never met the Fury star; I have, however, been tracking his career like a proud Nana since I was a sophomore in high school. Though I'm almost certain Even Stevens, the Disney show in which LaBeouf starred as consummate annoying little brother Louis Stevens from 2000-2003, was intended for a younger audience, I was transfixed by the actor's sparkplug performance.

Much like Steve Urkel on Family Matters, Stephanie Tanner on Full House, or—and forgive me for this—T.J. on Smart Guy, Louis was such a pain in the ass that you'd tune in every week just to make sure he hadn't been gagged and bound by his family. (And I wasn't the only one taken with his off-the-wall energy: At 16, an elated LaBeouf took home a Daytime Emmy for the role.) I was such a fan, in fact, that when Christy Carlson Romano, the actress who played his sister on Stevens, turned up at a high school party one night (I have no idea what she was doing in D.C.), I immediately asked about her promising costar. I can't recall the exact words, but the sentiment was that he was the most. annoying. person she had ever met. Her face twisted up with disgust as she spat out the words. I should have been crushed, but I wasn't. I refused to believe it. I just assumed she was jealous.

And perhaps that's why my knee-jerk mama bird instinct to protect LaBeouf is troubling. (Also troubling: the fact that I feel anything towards a perfect stranger who chased around a homeless man barefoot in Times Square, smoked cigarettes during a performance of Cabaret, and allegedly smacked cast members' "bottoms.") When Britney Spears suffered a similar so-called public meltdown, I felt nothing. And when Amanda Bynes, Demi Lovato, and Lindsay Lohan splashed their troubling behaviors across the large, feckless stage that is our collective media appetite, I let it roll off my back. Not my problem, I thought. But watching LaBeouf go through something that clearly has deeper roots than too much booze or the average bout of celebrity exhaustion, I felt my ovaries ache. I wanted to protect him from the public opinion, the peering eyes, and even himself. And the bulk of that sympathy isn't derived from my appreciation of his work—although his turns in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006) and Lawless (2012) are arguably higher forms of art than any effort by the similarly maligned Justin Bieber—but rather his gender.

I've always been a girl with a savior complex: As a tween at sleep-away camp, I was the only one who "understood" Shane, an older (attractive) camper with behavioral problems; as a freshman in college, my AIM away message lamely quoted Bob Dylan, "'Come in,' she said, 'I'll give you shelter from the storm.'" Being singled out by a man who spurned the world only to reveal himself to me was the holy grail of achievements. (I think I saw Grease too many times when I was a little girl.) And it's a feeling tantamount to outperforming other women in general.

As a twentysomething in the same age bracket as the Lohans, Lovatos, and Spearses, their stumbles, in some way, make me feel superior. It's like calling another girl, one who we don't know all that well or saw drink too much at a party once, "crazy." It's a quick boost of dopamine—a hot shot of mean girl confidence. It's a dirty trick that loses its fanged potency when applied to a young man. Instead of shaming Shia, I feel compelled to see the good inside him. I sort of want to be the one who saves him? And though it seems like a nice instinct to pardon someone going through a rough time, it does not appear to be an equal opportunity sentiment. And that's also troubling.